“GOVERNAGE” – The mix between Governance and end user Usage – Blog 2 follow up

This vision paper will be written in a series of three blogs. In each of these series I hope to provide you with more insight in my understanding of today’s Microsoft SharePoint technology and how governance can be applied best.

Blog 2 – The rising

SharePoint grown up

SharePoint has evolved as a product, containing lots of modern technology and features suitable for a wide variety of businesses both small, medium and enterprise. Not less important it has also evolved into a strategic platform for large enterprises which are very much depended on this platform, day in day out. Microsoft is a strategic choice, so is SharePoint.

Some numbers…

Microsoft SharePoint is a grown up product these days. According to an article that was published on ZDNet.com three years ago, SharePoint had been adding 20.000 users per day for the previous five years. Between 2006 and 2011 that means, 36,500,000 users began using SharePoint.

80 percent of the fortune 500 companies are using Microsoft SharePoint with approximately 100,000,000 user accounts. These numbers were updated after the SharePoint 2013 release, which proved very successful.

As we can see, the influence and dependency grows, and it grows fast. More and more companies choose Microsoft strategically; the decision for SharePoint is a no-brainer.

Off course these are just (awesome) numbers. Installing SharePoint, adding users and use it as a document management system does not solve all your issues or business challenges and far more important is not a guarantee to success.

This is the reason that governance is a hot topic the last few years, people and businesses start to understand that SharePoint is more than just a tool or application that is evident when Microsoft becomes a strategic choice.

It requires high priority and attention from upper management.

Governance:

“… The collection of guidelines, roles, responsibilities and processes, which is defined to control and to supervise the deployment of SharePoint, so that the pre-defined objectives can be achieved within the organization.”

The reason for establishing and implementing a governance plan is to control the platform and how it is used. It ensures that resources can be used to its full potential. Agreements are clearly defined within the framework by a strategy group that determines to what extent and at what level governance is applied and secured.

Governance explained

Introducing the SharePoint 2013 platform can be compared to building a house. The client has a specific design in mind. When constructing a house, all kinds of rules (procedures) should be followed. There is a zoning plan (vision), there are regulations (company policy), there is a design (functional design) and a drawing (technical design). When construction is completed, the building must be maintained and perhaps rebuilt again after several years to improve the structure or the use of it.

This is the same for the SharePoint platform. It requires designs, plans, regulations and maintenance.

A governance plan.

To start determining a governance plan for your company, you have to setup a strategy group. In that group people from multiple layers of the organization should be represented, preferably from multiple departments. This mix ensures a broad perspective on your governance plan thus providing a more qualitative governance plan.

The strategy group needs to determine and agree upon a lot of subjects which describe how the platform will function, to which rules people should obey and all procedures and guidelines to make the platform work the most effective as possible. These subjects are divided into two different areas: Functional and Technical.

Vision and Purpose of SharePoint Implementation

Roles and responsibilities

Support Roles

Who is owner?

Information policy

Document retention and lifecycle

management of data

Taxonomy

Agreements about metadata

External and mobile access.

Name conventions

Work agreements

Branding

Theming / MasterPage / Document templates

Education plan

Authorization structure

Define a matrix

Quota’s

Per Site Collection

Per Site

Per document library

My Site storage

Management organization and management tooling

Define strategy group

Auditing

Search

Functional

Example of an image that describes the user support within SharePoint. This way users know where to go and how support is being delivered. Part of the “Roles and Responsibilities” subject.

Technical

Updates

When and how often installed?

Service packs

Always the second most recent version available?

WSP deployment

Time windows, who can and who can’t?

Performance testing

Monthly or quarterly scheduled?

Backup

Recovery time

Allowed loss of data

Disaster recovery

Technical guidelines

Development via .wsp’s allowed or apps only?

Development guide

Testplan acceptance procedure

Service accounts

An important thing to discuss, besides these functional and technical subjects, are the things you, as an organization, do not wish to accomplish when implementing the SharePoint platform. These could be very practical things like: SharePoint should not only replace the fileshare and SharePoint should not cause employees to receive an information overload.

How to get the business involved?

Business users determine the success of a SharePoint implementation. Therefore the users should get involved with setting up the platform right from the beginning. This would mean that they, as a group, should be represented within the strategy group to begin with.

Within all organizations there are multiple types of end users, we call these the business roles. These business roles that make use of the SharePoint platform should be represented within the strategy group, this is best thinkable although not always possible.

The size of the strategy group and how many people are representing the business is dependent on a lot of things but should be thought of very well. This is an early mistake easily made, not inviting the right people for these discussions could cause them to loose direct interest.

Get the business involved, talk to the end users, set up a communication plan and communicate! And be aware, that when you communicate towards the business, your governance should be in place to provide the business with all guidelines and procedures in order to help them create added value for the company.

Write down all requirements that the business provides in a roadmap. Discuss about these requirements and roadmap in the strategy group and attach dates to them. Then again, communicate with your business and enjoy the controlled added value of the SharePoint platform.

In the next blog part I will talk about how governance has evolved along with SharePoint and provide a quick look into the future. One thing that will be more and more important these next few years is Office 365 and SharePoint online. Off course governance applies for these platforms as well, but is it the same? If not, what is different and how does that effect your business?

(this article was originally posted on Rick’s own blog: http://rickhilferink.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/governage-blog-2-follow-up-the-mix-between-governance-and-end-user-usage/)